Chapter 5
Karina and I sit on the barstools in Teddy’s kitchen, glass of wine in our hands and our phones in front of us.
Teddy is sat up on the worktop, still in the blue bandage dress she’s worn for work, her stilettos dangling from her feet, working her way through the pitta bread and hummus she’s put out for all of us.
She’s eaten most of it herself as she’s not had time to stop all day, too busy racing from one side of the city to the other to show people round houses on her boss’ say so.
‘OK. Now we’re finally all here, who’s going first?’ Karina asks, staring pointedly at me for arriving half an hour late after a staff meeting at school ran over.
‘Not me,’ Teddy says. ‘I need more wine.’
‘Me too,’ I agree, ‘although we don’t want to be slurring when we call them.’
‘Good point. I’ll go first,’ Karina offers. ‘Get it over and done with.’ She picks up her phone before abruptly placing it back down again. ‘Are we right in thinking this is a good idea? Or are we about to make complete arses of ourselves?’
‘No,’ I insist, as I have been all week. ‘The opposite. Three men are about to get extremely lucky thanks to us. Just keep thinking what the payoff for a two-minute awkward conversation could be. You can do this.’
Somewhere among the hundreds of messages we’ve sent over the last week, we decided that when the time came for each of us to ring up our exes, we’d do it together, that it would be far less awkward if we had each other there for moral support and if there was booze involved.
Karina has decided to set me up with an ex of hers I vaguely remember called Nathan, who I never managed to meet before she broke up with him because he kept wearing an aftershave she couldn’t stand.
Smell aside, she’s promised he’s lovely and funny and she thinks we’ll get on really well.
I’ve decided to set Teddy up with Jay. Once I started writing my pros and cons lists for my top three exes, he was a clear winner with a decent list of positives to his name.
Teddy’s still to tell us who she’s choosing for Karina, and I’m not sure if that’s because she has lots of options or is struggling to find even one.
All day I’ve been excited to get to Teddy’s, to finally get these dates sorted, and nervous as I am at speaking to Jay again, I’m looking forward to Karina calling Nathan and putting us in touch with each other.
‘Good luck, Kar,’ Teddy says.
‘Here we go. The things I do for you, Lizzie,’ Karina says before taking a huge gulp of wine and picking her phone up. ‘Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,’ she chants until the call is picked up. ‘Oh hey, Nathan, it’s Karina. Long time, no speak.’
Teddy makes a show of pretending to choke on her pitta bread at long time no speak before smiling at me and giving me a thumbs up.
‘I’m good,’ Karina is saying. ‘Yeah, you too … I know, it has been too long. Listen, I’m ringing because I wanted to see if you were still single … yeah, it’s great to hear your voice too … I, erm, maybe … anyway, I’m sorry I’ve got another call. I’ll ring you back soon.’
Karina hangs up and drops the phone on the breakfast bar like it’s burning her hand.
‘So, when’s Lizzie meeting him?’ Teddy asks casually.
‘Oh my God, I’m sorry Lizzie, I didn’t get to that. I thought he’d have basically forgotten who I was by now, but he definitely hadn’t. I’m sorry.’
‘Did he just ask you out again?’ I ask.
‘Kind of.’ Karina grimaces, and I fake roll my eyes before laughing. Karina’s never understood the power she has over men; why her warm and caring nature combined with her beauty is just something that men can’t resist, and I can’t help but love her all the more for not seeing it.
‘Course he did.’
‘I’ll come up with someone else, don’t worry. But one of you needs to go next while I recover.’
I keep smiling, but my stomach feels heavy with disappointment. Nathan was the best ex Karina could come up with, and now it looks like she’ll have to choose her second best, which doesn’t bring with it quite the same promise of amazing dates I was looking forward to.
‘Go on, Teddy,’ I say. ‘Your turn. You have decided who it will be, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have. OK,’ Teddy says through a chunk of pitta bread. ‘I’m ready.’ She swallows it, picks up her phone and presses dial.
‘Put it on speaker phone,’ Karina says.
‘No fucking way,’ Teddy tells her a millisecond before the person on the line picks up. ‘Hi Matthew, I don’t know if you remember me, but it’s Teddy Atkinson. We dated for a while a few years back.’
Interesting. I remember Matthew. Teddy had only been with him for two months before Matthew had ended it because he was a builder regularly working 5 a.m. early shifts, and they’d discovered their lifestyles were not remotely compatible.
An odd choice for Karina – completely not the kind of sleek, works-in-the-city-centre-wearing-chinos kind of man Karina normally goes for.
‘Nope,’ Teddy says to Matthew, before letting out a nervous laugh. ‘Don’t need you to come out to fix anything, thanks. I’m actually ringing to see if you happened to be single at the moment because I have this friend who I think you’d really like. You are? That’s great.’
Two minutes later, Teddy hangs up the phone triumphantly. ‘All sorted. He can’t wait to hear from you, Kar.’
‘Matthew?’ Karina says. ‘Shit. Matthew? The Matthew you introduced me to when we bumped into each other at the cinema? Teddy, he was like a whole other person taller than me, and I seem to remember him taking the piss when he asked what film I’d been to see, and I told him The Meg 2 for the third time. ’
‘Firstly, everyone took the piss out of you for seeing The Meg 2 that many times. That was just a natural human reaction to anyone willingly spending that many hours watching Jason Statham. Secondly, yes, he is the tallest person I’ve ever been out with, but you regularly wear shoes that will put you at eye level with him, so I’m not too worried.
But most importantly, Matthew is funny and down to earth and kind, so please give him a chance. ’
‘Fine,’ Karina says, pouting but with the side of her mouth twitching upwards. ‘Give me his number then.’
I give Teddy an approving smile until the thought of what comes next makes my mouth fall into a grimace.
‘What is it?’ Teddy asks. ‘Your face looks as though you’ve just remembered your execution in the morning.’
‘Worse. I’m next, aren’t I?’
‘Yep,’ Teddy and Karina say together.
I reluctantly pick up my phone and scroll through my contacts until I find Jay.
It’s not that Jay is awful. The opposite, in fact.
I’ve picked him for Teddy because I remember how down to earth and warm he was on our dates, and Teddy hasn’t seen much of those qualities recently.
She gets infatuation, she gets a lot of showing off, but maybe because of the sex appeal she oozes, sometimes men don’t get that Teddy needs more.
Jay is a homebody, someone who loved snuggling up on the sofa on a Saturday night watching TV when he wasn’t working in his café or coming up with plots to take down Starbucks.
He can give Teddy something different from the nights out and the glamour, and I’m excited to see what happens.
The only thing is, I’d assumed our break-up conversation would be the final time we’d talk, and I’d perhaps gone a tad too far when giving him a list of pointers to help him in his love life.
The list involved not watching quite so many gameshows and working on his facial expressions when his date didn’t get a single question right when watching The Chase.
Now that I’m about to speak to him again, I wish I’d kept quiet.
Teddy and Karina are looking at me expectantly, so I press call.
‘Lizzie Cook,’ he says picking up, his sing-song northern accent catapulting me back to the time we’d spent together when he’d had an annoying habit of always using my full name, only instead of pronouncing my surname Cook to rhyme with shook like I did, he said it as C-U-K-E to rhyme with puke.
‘Hi Jay, sorry to be calling you out of the blue like this. How are you?’
‘Me? I’m great. Super. How are you?’
‘Good, thanks. How’s the coffee business?’
‘Coffee? Oh yeah, that. No, nothing happened there. These big bastard chains won’t let anyone else get a look in. I work in sales now.’
‘That’s a shame,’ I say, and having absolutely no desire to stay on the phone dissecting his failed business, I make myself get to the reason I’m calling. ‘I know it’s kind of strange me asking you this after all this time, but I was wondering if you were still single.’
‘Oh, Lizzie, I’m sorry I …’
‘No, no, not for me. For a friend.’ Was that pity in his voice?
‘Right. Well, you’ll have to tell your friend I’m a taken man. Emily and I are engaged to be betrothed,’ he says, clearly delighted with himself.
‘Oh! That’s great, Jay. I’m really happy for you.’
‘Thank you. She’s wonderful. And do you know what? She’s seen every episode of Countdown since she was thirteen. Oh, and she doesn’t think the capital city of Holland is Denmark.’
‘It sounds like you’ve found your perfect match,’ I say, choosing to ignore the slight. Of course, I know the capital of Holland is Amsterdam. Now.
‘I have. I’m sure yours is out there too, Lizzie Cook,’ Jay says before hanging up.
I don’t bother to question why Jay assumes I’m still single. The only thing that matters to me is that Jay said no. I stare at my phone screen for a few seconds to get over that just happening before turning to face Teddy.
‘Sorry, Ted. I really thought he’d have gone for it.’
‘It’s fine,’ she says with a flick of a hand to waft away my apology. ‘I’m sure you’ll come up with someone else.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I lie. It was hard enough to come up with Jay. ‘I’ll think of someone good.’
‘I know you will. Is that it for tonight then? Shall we watch a film or something?’ Teddy says. The ease in which she’s willing to move on makes me think she’s not anywhere near as bothered as I am about this plan.
‘Hang on,’ Karina says. I turn to her, and see her mouth is pulled up into that same smile she gets on her face when she gets a wordle right or wins a bid on eBay, and her eyes are lit up. ‘Before we give up for the night, I can think of someone you could set Teddy up with.’
‘Really?’ This is a surprise. If Karina had a best ex of mine in mind all along, it would have saved me hours of deliberating.
‘Yeah. Elliot.’
‘Elliot?’ I repeat. ‘Elliot?’ I feign surprise at his name being brought up. I should be more shocked than I am, and I guess it is surprising that Karina would think of him. But already talking to him about the plan makes it feel not as out of the blue as it should.
‘Yes, Elliot. You’re always telling us about the funny things he does or how lovely he’s been at work, and he’s always been such good fun whenever he’s joined us on nights out.
He’d be a great choice. And technically, he qualifies.
As long as it wouldn’t bother you if he went out with Teddy, that is,’ she says, giving me a long, questioning look.
Karina has always had this idea that there’s more going on with Elliot and me than I make out.
No matter how long I spend reminding her that we work in the same department, that he helped me through the start of my career, and we’re work friends who don’t think about each other in any other way, she’s always been sceptical, like it’s not possible for us to just be friends.
I’ve always put it down to her not having any male friends herself because they always end up falling for her.
‘Of course it wouldn’t bother me,’ I say with the sunniest smile I can muster.
‘But he really doesn’t qualify,’ I tell her, trying to make out her idea to be ridiculous, when truthfully, as soon as I’d started the process of going back through my love life to find an ex for Teddy, Elliot’s high-cheek-boned, cute-and-rugged-at-the-same-time face had popped into my mind.
OK, yes, we’d shared one night together a year ago.
One night that should have been a keen-to-impress new teacher meeting her friendly colleague for a few drinks in a pub to talk about work.
Somehow, the night ran away with itself and became something else entirely.
Somehow, I ended up having the best sex of my life with someone who not only made me laugh until my sides hurt but made me feel beautiful and completely comfortable. But so what?
It didn’t matter how good the sex was, it was a stupid mistake to make.
I might have woken up next to him with my body still humming from his touch, but that was nothing compared to the nausea-inducing regret that weighed heavy in my stomach.
I knew it could never happen again, that sleeping with a co-worker during the first term of your first year of teaching was a monumental recipe for disaster and luckily, Elliot agreed.
During a five-minute text conversation the morning after, we both put it down to a few hours of madness courtesy of too much wine, and we promised each other we’d forget all about it.
From the first Monday morning we locked eyes at school after it happened, Elliot appeared to have erased it from his mind, so I followed his lead and tried to do the same.
But that doesn’t mean I want him dating my best friend. Besides, as he’s nowhere near an ex, he should be nowhere near this plan.
Teddy and Karina exchange a sceptical look, and I see the teasing smirk start to cross Karina’s face again before she decides, ‘I think if you wanted him to be, Elliot could definitely be an option.’
‘But if it’s too weird, I’m sure there’ll be someone else you can think of,’ Teddy quickly adds, making me wonder if she wants to be set up with Elliot after all.
I know the two of them think Elliot is gorgeous and a great guy, but any conversations we have about him being either gorgeous or great have always ended in them teasing me about how much I must like Elliot, I have no idea if he’s someone Teddy would be interested in.
My stomach does a weird little backflip at the thought.
‘No,’ I say, firmly, trying to put an end to this line of thinking for good. ‘No. Elliot doesn’t count, but don’t worry, Teddy. I’ll come up with someone else. Someone even better.’